Fixed Vera3 UI5

Community Playground General Discussions
#1

I finally figured out how to fix my Vera3 UI5 after having lots of problems. Its been working flawlessly for months now so I thought I’d post what I did to fix it. I am using firmware 1.5.672

Just a bit of a backstory (skip this if you want to get straight to the meat of fixing Vera)…
So like most everyone else I was having many problems with my Vera3 UI5. When I first bought a Veralite, things were good, then I upgraded to a Vera3 when I ran out of memory. Initially things were good, but then I started having problems. I backed up, did many restores, but eventually my network would fail or give me problems day after day. I have around 100 devices now, about half battery powered and half mains powered. I finally figured out that not only does one need to do a factory restore before restoring from backup, but the z-wave network needs to be reset also beforehand. I did NOT have to re-include everything. Afterwards, you can restore from a backup including the z-wave network and everything works. I also took some other steps to maybe help smooth things out.

So here’s what I did:

  1. Backup files cannot be installed on older firmware. Whatever firmware your backup is, that is what needs to be installed on your Vera or newer. This was my first problem. You don’t have to have the newest firmware, but newer is probably better. At least in UI5 world.

  2. Under SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS->OPTIONS, there are five checkboxes. The first two and last ones should be checked. Uncheck ‘Use Vera routing instead of Z-Wave (requires 4.5)’ and ‘Limit neighbors to Z-Wave discovery (requires Vera routing)’. Save any changes.

  3. Get everything working…it doesn’t have to work well, but it has to work. Exclude, include, configure device…whatever, but DO NOT HEAL.
    3b. As part of this step I also deleted any “negative” info/settings under the ADVANCED tab of all my mains powered devices. I deleted the AUTOROUTE settings of all devices. I also deleted anything in the the POLLNOREPLY, COMMFAILURE, and ALLROUTESFAILED spaces. Sometimes it seemed that these settings negatively affected the performance. I basically wanted to start ‘clean’. Again, save settings as you go.

  4. Once everything is ‘clean’ and working, go to SETUP->BACKUP, and press ‘Backup Z-wave network’. When that’s done, hit ‘Create backup’. Save this file to restore from later.

  5. Now on the same SETUP->BACKUP page, press ‘restore to factory defaults’. This step didn’t always go so well. Things would hang on startup sometimes or it would take multiple reboots, but eventually it would work. It just took some fiddling.

  6. Once you’re back in and everything looks new, go to SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS->ADVANCED and press ‘Go’ next to RESET Z-WAVE NETWORK.

I actually did steps 4 and 5 multiple times just to make sure EVERYTHING was gone. I don’t think it actually did anything but it made me feel better.

  1. Once the unit is factory fresh and the z-wave network is reset, you can restore from the backup you made earlier. Go to SETUP->BACKUP and under RESTORE, choose your backup file, check the box labeled RESTORE Z-WAVE NETWORK, then press the RESTORE button. Let Vera do its thing. It SHOULD go smoothly. I did this whole process many times on two separate Vera3 units. It was the same on both - seemed like step 5 gave me the most trouble but I would get through it.

  2. Now that everything is restored, go back to SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS and make sure the same boxes are check and unchecked as #2. This means the automatic heals will not occur. I also had the first box unchecked for a while but that created some problems down the road. I guess Vera needs to be able to configure SOME settings.

  3. Go through all your devices and fix and remaining issues. Anything you see should be minor.

  4. Try to make as many devices as possible communicate directly with Vera. This is done my putting a ‘0’ in the MANUAL Z-WAVE ROUTE under each devices DEVICE OPTIONS. Again save as you go. Generally I only did this with my mains powered devices, door locks, and other miscellaneous items that would take it. I didn’t do it on any battery powered devices. Every once in a while a light switch wouldn’t take it. The configuration step would fail. When it did, I hit the breaker or pulled the air gap switch on the switch itself to remove power to reset, and that seemed to work for the most part. I have a couple of devices that just don’t seem to like the ‘0’, but this only happened to a couple of devices.

  5. Once everything is working well, do a reboot and backup once again, including the z-wave network.

So I’m not sure which one of these steps really fixed it, but previously I would restore to whatever firmware I felt like (which I’m sure was a problem), and I didn’t reset the z-wave network. Also, nightly heals were messing things up. After the steps above, my network was really snappy and has been going for months without problems. No nightly heals. On my network, the nightly heals would still mess things up or slow down a device. Not doing the heals has worked out much better for me so far.

Now a couple more things. My Vera is centrally located on my property on the main floor. Its sitting near the ceiling of the main level on a shelf. I did install an external antenna as discussed in other forums. All of my mains powered devices except maybe one or two can directly communicate with Vera, with the farthest mains powered device being about 40ft away (through multiple walls). I have battery powered devices even further, which I assume are relaying across the mains powered ones. There are also two Aeon repeaters outside. I’m not sure if they’re helping, but I figure it couldn’t hurt. My backup Vera3 doesn’t have the antenna mod, but it seems to work just as well. I have them identically setup so I just have to unplug one and plug in the other.

I’m sorry this is a bit long but hopefully someone might get some relief like I have.

#2

Thank you! This seems to have fixed my latest issues!

#3

Thank You @Katmai

I’m currently trying this out and it seems promising. ;D

Update 4 Sept 2015: Things works just great after following your advice. Thanks again :smiley:

#4

Nine days has passed since I followed your guide. Vera has been rock stable. Everything just works as supposed to. Before I could not rely on that Vera always was working and sometimes “things” just happened for an unknown reason.

I’m so happy and I want to buy You a beer ;D

#5

Thanks for this tutorial. I followed the steps and it took a while going through every single device as you can see in the attached picture. With that said, it went smoothly as you outlined as long as people are patient.

I would make one important suggestion. When you go through all this I would recommend to have a second browser window open to review the live logs from Vera as it helps a lot to see what is going on in real time as you are making changes (scary to see how often Lua crashed before all this reset).

http://$IP ADDRESS OF VERA$/cgi-bin/cmh/log.sh?Device=LuaUPnP
#6

[quote=“Katmai, post:1, topic:186484”]I finally figured out how to fix my Vera3 UI5 after having lots of problems. Its been working flawlessly for months now so I thought I’d post what I did to fix it. I am using firmware 1.5.672

Just a bit of a backstory (skip this if you want to get straight to the meat of fixing Vera)…
So like most everyone else I was having many problems with my Vera3 UI5. When I first bought a Veralite, things were good, then I upgraded to a Vera3 when I ran out of memory. Initially things were good, but then I started having problems. I backed up, did many restores, but eventually my network would fail or give me problems day after day. I have around 100 devices now, about half battery powered and half mains powered. I finally figured out that not only does one need to do a factory restore before restoring from backup, but the z-wave network needs to be reset also beforehand. I did NOT have to re-include everything. Afterwards, you can restore from a backup including the z-wave network and everything works. I also took some other steps to maybe help smooth things out.

So here’s what I did:

  1. Backup files cannot be installed on older firmware. Whatever firmware your backup is, that is what needs to be installed on your Vera or newer. This was my first problem. You don’t have to have the newest firmware, but newer is probably better. At least in UI5 world.

  2. Under SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS->OPTIONS, there are five checkboxes. The first two and last ones should be checked. Uncheck ‘Use Vera routing instead of Z-Wave (requires 4.5)’ and ‘Limit neighbors to Z-Wave discovery (requires Vera routing)’. Save any changes.

  3. Get everything working…it doesn’t have to work well, but it has to work. Exclude, include, configure device…whatever, but DO NOT HEAL.
    3b. As part of this step I also deleted any “negative” info/settings under the ADVANCED tab of all my mains powered devices. I deleted the AUTOROUTE settings of all devices. I also deleted anything in the the POLLNOREPLY, COMMFAILURE, and ALLROUTESFAILED spaces. Sometimes it seemed that these settings negatively affected the performance. I basically wanted to start ‘clean’. Again, save settings as you go.

  4. Once everything is ‘clean’ and working, go to SETUP->BACKUP, and press ‘Backup Z-wave network’. When that’s done, hit ‘Create backup’. Save this file to restore from later.

  5. Now on the same SETUP->BACKUP page, press ‘restore to factory defaults’. This step didn’t always go so well. Things would hang on startup sometimes or it would take multiple reboots, but eventually it would work. It just took some fiddling.

  6. Once you’re back in and everything looks new, go to SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS->ADVANCED and press ‘Go’ next to RESET Z-WAVE NETWORK.

I actually did steps 4 and 5 multiple times just to make sure EVERYTHING was gone. I don’t think it actually did anything but it made me feel better.

  1. Once the unit is factory fresh and the z-wave network is reset, you can restore from the backup you made earlier. Go to SETUP->BACKUP and under RESTORE, choose your backup file, check the box labeled RESTORE Z-WAVE NETWORK, then press the RESTORE button. Let Vera do its thing. It SHOULD go smoothly. I did this whole process many times on two separate Vera3 units. It was the same on both - seemed like step 5 gave me the most trouble but I would get through it.

  2. Now that everything is restored, go back to SETUP->Z-WAVE SETTINGS and make sure the same boxes are check and unchecked as #2. This means the automatic heals will not occur. I also had the first box unchecked for a while but that created some problems down the road. I guess Vera needs to be able to configure SOME settings.

  3. Go through all your devices and fix and remaining issues. Anything you see should be minor.

  4. Try to make as many devices as possible communicate directly with Vera. This is done my putting a ‘0’ in the MANUAL Z-WAVE ROUTE under each devices DEVICE OPTIONS. Again save as you go. Generally I only did this with my mains powered devices, door locks, and other miscellaneous items that would take it. I didn’t do it on any battery powered devices. Every once in a while a light switch wouldn’t take it. The configuration step would fail. When it did, I hit the breaker or pulled the air gap switch on the switch itself to remove power to reset, and that seemed to work for the most part. I have a couple of devices that just don’t seem to like the ‘0’, but this only happened to a couple of devices.

  5. Once everything is working well, do a reboot and backup once again, including the z-wave network.[/quote]

I just had to go through this procedure since my Vera went crazy after running stable for over a year. It did work and I am back in business.

At this point now all my devices are ok, but the advanced>autoroute variable is blank (as expected). However this leaves AltUI unable to display any data More>network quality. It is a blank page.

The big question is…Should I go ahead and do a “heal” so autoroute populates again OR should I leave well alone? I assume if I do a heal then AltUI will again display zwave data, but I do not want to break Vera again. I have nightly heals disabled.

#7

@Pseudomizer, question what utility/procedure did you use to map out your Z-wave diagram?

#8

Alternative UI plug in

#9

@Pseudomizer, thanxs for the comeback… I’m not sure I’m quite up to moving to Alternative UI just yet, I’m still recovering from having to factory reset my VERAEDGE and re-include all of my devices, scene and PLEG routines took a few days but I seem to now be running a platform without having multiple restarts/lock-ups daily. My Z-wave network was corrupted (Vera3 to Edge conversion) Mike

#10

Maybe you already know, if not some extra background on ALTUI:

ALTUI is not a replacement, it will be added alongside your Vera UI.
Its in a sense “non disruptive” as it does all it calls by itself ans is not integrating in the Vera UI other then 1 visible device.
It mainly runs in your browser so actually the load on your Vera is not much.

#11

Maybe you already know, if not some extra background on ALTUI:

ALTUI is not a replacement, it will be added alongside your Vera UI.
Its in a sense “non disruptive” as it does all it calls by itself ans is not integrating in the Vera UI other then 1 visible device.
It mainly runs in your browser so actually the load on your Vera is not much.[/quote]

Thanks for this info! I’ve been loosely following the altUI discussion, but didn’t realize this was the case. It didn’t sink in that it works with UI5 for some reason either. Looks like I’ll be making some upgrades to our system this weekend!

#12

;D you will like it it has many nice features not availible in the standard vera UIs

#13

@mcalistair, many thanxs for info in regards to AltUI, I too was under the impression that it was more intrusive and will have to give it a try. “Guess you can train an old dog!” ::slight_smile: Mike